STATCOUNTER

June 2018

In many restaurants it is common to have a tip added on to your bill if you have a large party, or if it is after a certain time of the evening. This makes sense, as the restaurant wants to insure that the wait staff won’t get stiffed. The usual gratuity is 15% to 20%, and the inclusion is clearly indicated on the check, and pointed out by the server.

However…if you look closely—very, very closely—at the check above, you may perhaps notice a tiny 18% right above a very large “TOTAL.” There is absolutely no indication that this amount is for a tip, no indication anywhere on the check that the tip has been already included. And the server never mentioned it to us. (Also, we were just a party of three, not four as the check indicates; certainly not large enough to expect a pre-added gratuity, especially during lunchtime.)

These decisions don’t just happen. Management decided to include the tip on all checks, management chose not to care about the size of the party or the hour, and management chose not point out that the tip was included. And the server, who may or may not reflect management’s wishes, certainly did not feel any obligation to do the right thing. This is an audacious example of customer disservice.

If you feel you have to add on a shipping charge, include an adjustment in a bill, or do anything that has a cost that could possibly be missed by a customer, be certain to point it out. Clearly, boldly and often. As a wise man once said to me, “Be careful what you do on a Wednesday. It can turn around and bite you on your butt on Friday.”

Though I have not done the research necessary to prove this, I am sure that of the more than 1,0000 blogs I have written, most are under 350 words. Short blogs, they say, are a good thing. This, I say, is just the way I write.

My toilet training in advertising was spent mainly in years of writing thirty-second commercials. Usually around sixty-five or seventy words. So a great deal of time was spent removing language, and editing what was left. A habit that has kept with me, all these years later.

I have a friend who wrote American Express direct mail pieces years ago. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, page after page of copy. I probably could have done it in half a page, plus the response card.

This is not a good thing, or a bad thing. It is just my thing. For example, if I wanted to say that the problem with using light versions of a product is that usually you just add more of it, because you want the same effect, that is probably what I would say.

But there are writers who could convey basically the same information in a paragraph or two, or three; helpful if you are getting paid by the word. And while I am not as earnest a writer as Hemingway, I also am not of the “feathered spokes of sunshine cracking through the steel of gray clouds” descriptive prose school.

My writing style is turning out to be a good thing in today’s world of six-second commercials, crisp web pages, Instagram captions and 120 character tweets (I know you can now use more characters, but if you can’t get your thought across in 120, you are not really trying.)

In terms of writing marketing copy, my advice is that whatever your writing style is, don’t try to adapt it to the publication, or the product. It will come off as stilted and unpersuasive. Use the voice that is true to you. It is often better, and always easier.

This was an incident from years ago, which somehow just popped into my head. An ad agency I had done some freelance work for was going through a rough patch. So in anticipation of a prospective client showing up that afternoon, they rounded up a bunch of us writers and art directors that had done work for them previously. They had us sit at desks while pretending that we were working on various accounts. The agency thinking was that it would show how busy and thriving the ad agency was. Because no one wants to give his business to a shop that is perceived to be struggling.

I always admired the ad agency’s pluck, and doubted whether I could have pulled off the same stunt if I had needed to. Or had thought of it.

The larger point is whether you think this scheme was a good idea.

The ad agency never actually said all these people were employees, though that certainly was the impression they had stage-managed. But they had indeed intentionally misrepresented the truth, to help their business.

Sometimes it’s just a question of scale. When people ask, “How’s business?” who doesn’t exaggerate slightly to look a little better? And often the more audacious the stunt, the more rewarding the results. As in the “If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly” school of behavior.

Not certain where to draw the line? I guess the more likely that the deception will hurt people, the less likely you should be to do it.

If you don’t recognize the name of the author, Elmore Leonard, you surely know his books and the films based on them, such as Get Shorty, Hombre, Out of Sight. Along with the TV series Justified, based on the U.S. Marshal character he created, Raylan Gibbons.

He has formulated ten rules of writing, that, though designed for writers of fiction, are important for anyone who puts pen to paper, or keyboard to computer screen. And certainly his last “rule” applies to any marketing material you may be creating.

Never open a book with weather.

Avoid prologues.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.